CLAS Dean Jeremy Teitelbaum speaks at a UConn Foundation event on Sept. 25, 2009. Teitelbaum will take over as interim Provost when current Provost Mun Choi heads to Missouri to take over as president. (File Photo/The Daily Campus)

University of Connecticut President Susan Herbst informed the community on Thursday morning about the appointment of Jeremy Teitelbaum as the new interim Provost to replace Provost Mun Choi.

Teitelbaum currently serves as the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and has since 2008. He will begin as interim provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the beginning of February, when Choi will step down to begin his new position as the president of the University of Missouri.

“I will take on these new responsibilities starting in February out of a sense of service to the University I have come to love, and I am grateful to President Herbst for her confidence in me,” Teitelbaum said. “In the meantime I look forward to continuing as Dean of CLAS and to continuing to work with Provost Choi and his staff.”

Teitelbaum said before he steps into the role of interim provost, his first goal is reaching out to the various deans and administrators to discuss his new position and the university’s priorities for the next year. He hopes to quickly learn as much as possible about Choi’s roles and commitments at the university.

In her email to the UConn community, Herbst said, “I am confident that he will ensure a smooth transition and that under his leadership we will continue to advance the many critical priorities detailed in our Academic Plan.”

Herbst and a search committee will begin the process to find the new permanent provost in the summertime, and hopes to fulfill the role by the end of 2017. An interim dean for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences will be found in the coming weeks.

Bryce Hill, a seventh-semester cognitive science major, said she is looking forward to a change of pace in the administration from Choi’s engineering background to Teitelbaum’s liberal arts background.

“I feel like it’s good to have a change,” Hill said. “I feel like we have a lot of advancements in the engineering department and it would be great to have advancements in other areas.”